“So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, go throw your TV set away, and in its place you can install, a lovely bookshelf on the wall.” ― Roald Dahl

The little battle of trudging on

I had planned on staying up this morning to focus on my revision (I desperately need to get a load done) as my first exam will be on the 24th of this said same month. But, no, like the idiotic dunderhead (and I might have been redundant there but it’ll add to effect) that I am, I ended up reading a non-school related book, and someone please cosh me over the head with a brick because it was a Nora Roberts.

But somehow after reading for a shameful amount of time and then absorbing the fact that it was well past 3 AM, I turned the book off with a mollified jolt. Though I was then motivated enough, some tea didn’t hurt any. While going about the business of making it, a thought that came to me often passed my way just then. And because a lot of you (I’m guessing here) might not have noticed that particular notion I’ll be kind as to share it with you dearies so you could mull it over in utter befuddlement like yours truly:

With all the convenience man has laid at his feet you’d have thought by now we’d have come up with a way to make the flaming microwave door close without such a flaming racket to wake up the whole bleeding country. If there is such a blessed thing in existence then I am unaware of it and that it is more than likely some filthy stinking rich guy has one and I’d envy him.

I, and I assume like many students, procrastinate where studying is concerned, especially when exams are stealthly approaching as they always seem to be so far away then – WHAM! Next thing you now, the coming week you’re left scrambling for a pen (and when you do find one it doesn’t write right) with your teeth chattering in your sorry head. By then you’ve worked your several strands of hair to an admirable shade of grey before you’ve met your 25 year mark that you can’t remember what the devil is a xylem vessel and what on God’s green earth does it do?

I haven’t reached there as yet and I don’t intend to ever travel down that old, worn and beaten path again. Dear Shia Labeouf, I hope not! A-Levels are much more difficult than any of the other courses I’ve taken. No surprise there, and why should there be any? Cambridge has been known for their high standards for ages. It’s a challenge but I’ve decided to play it stubborn, refusing to cower in the shadows, that I’ll rise to it head on. I’ll tell you why.

Before, a few years prior, I was into studying with a good effort but in retrospect it was not enough. I’ve grown up a considerably good deal since. I’ve realized that there’s more at stake that I had known before. Great things were expected of me, like many of us, that I knew. I had siblings to set a shining example for, there were – and still are – people who are particularly obnoxiously tight up about grades, sniffing their dainty noses at the average except when their kids get average grades. What would they think?

Back then I didn’t care very much about what people thought and it was much healthier that way but now it’s begun to matter what they say and I don’t like it one bit. These same critical people can break me only if I give in to their snips but I gleaned something positive from their unwanted attentions: they actually encourage me to prove them wrong! It all comes back to bite ‘em in the behind, so if any of you ill wishers (and you know who you are) are reading this I offer you my deepest and heartfelt thanks.

Now I’ve got my family at the top of my list of reasons why I should press myself, I believe they were there all along but I can’t be sure as I was much much more of a tangled mess of raw teenage hormones with very little clearly outlined. My parents, and theirs before them, worked hard for me and my sisters and the generations to come, I want to make them proud, to make them happy and satisfied to be shown that little by little their lives’ work are paying off. By that I also am content. I want the best for myself but I want to work for it, really work for it rather than having it come to be easily in what ever ways they can come; my success will be sweeter that way.

Then I can say I’ve done it with my determination and the appreciated little nudges from people who care always there encouraging me. In a way, I think by also working hard for my grades I’ll be proving myself worthy … worthy of exactly what I’m yet to know or maybe I already know it unconsciously. No I lied. I know what I’m about. But eventually it’ll be even more clear to me, I’ll understand then but what’s important for the time being is that I should be getting to where I want to be first.

There are more reasons to add but I can’t remember them all at the moment as I’ve learned there are indeed more. Let me say this though, for those out there not as privileged as I am in my middle class niche, and I mean this in many ways; not enough money, little if any support (and this applies even if you could afford the best education) and what ever else there is on that sordid list … let me say that those of you that have succeeded despite facing all of some or all of those difficulties, I salute you because I admire such grit to keep fighting and working for what you deserve. You are my heroes.

Phew! That was something, now wasn’t it? Now I’ll return to the pressing matters of irritating microwaves, dog-eared carpets and grasshoppers in my bat cave (seriously not a bat cave! Thank goodness).

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4 thoughts on “The little battle of trudging on”

Exams… I’ll be starting them next week, though I still have one year before the CIE A-levels true exams. And I so agree with you, I can totally understand.
For me, I try to have great grades only for my family’s sake, as indeed they’re sacrificed a lot, worked hard to make me get good education etc… so I won’t let them down!